Evolutionary variation in cognition – The Cognitive Evolution Group

Cognition in the wild: understanding animal thought in its natural context

Rosati, A.G., Machanda, Z.P., & Slocombe, K.E. (2022). Cognition in the wild: understanding animal thought in its natural context. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 47: 101210.

[PDF] [Publisher’s version] Abstract

Why study cognition in the wild? Comparative perspectives on cognition from nonhumans have long been an important avenue for answering questions about how the mind works, sometimes with animals standing in as models for different aspects of human thought, and sometimes with a focus on the diverse cognitive processes of different species. Yet, research in comparative cognition has to date overwhelmingly involved inquiry based in laboratories. While such captive contexts can allow for the control needed to tease apart the mechanisms underlying behavior, they are also limited in several crucial ways. In particular, understanding cognition requires examining how it works in the real world — which can be messy, complex, and confusing. While cognition may be challenging to study in natural contexts, such data are crucial to fully understand the breadth and depth of nonhuman thought and how it contributes to real-world behavior. Situating cognition in the wild — the context in which it evolved — is therefore necessary to understand the function of these traits.

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The evolution of cognitive control in lemurs

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition

De Petrillo, F., Nair, P., Cantwell, A., & Rosati, A.G. (2022). The evolution of cognitive control in lemurs. Psychological Science, 33: 1408-1422.

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Cognitive control, or executive function, is a key feature of human cognition, allowing individuals to plan, acquire new information, or adopt new strategies when the circumstances change. Yet it is unclear which factors promote the evolution of more sophisticated executive-function abilities such as those possessed by humans. Examining cognitive control in nonhuman primates, our closest relatives, can help to identify these evolutionary processes. Here, we developed a novel battery to experimentally measure multiple aspects of cognitive control in primates: temporal discounting, motor inhibition, short-term memory, reversal learning, novelty responses, and persistence. We tested lemur species with targeted, independent variation in both ecological and social features (ruffed lemurs, Coquerel’s sifakas, ring-tailed lemurs, and mongoose lemurs; N = 39) and found that ecological rather than social characteristics best predicted patterns of cognitive control across these species. This highlights the importance of integrating cognitive data with species’ natural history to understand the origins of complex cognition.

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Sensitivity to line-of-sight in tolerant versus despotic macaques (Macaca sylvanus and Macaca mulatta)

Development and aging, Evolutionary variation in cognition, Social cognition and cooperation

Bettle, R. & Rosati, A.G. (2022) Sensitivity to line-of-sight in tolerant versus despotic macaques (Macaca sylvanus and Macaca mulatta). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 136: 93–104.

[PDF] [Supplementary] [Study Video] [Publisher’s version] [Commentary] Abstract

Complex social life is considered important to the evolution of cognition in primates. One key aspect of primate social interactions concerns the degree of competition that individuals face in their social group. To examine how social tolerance versus competition shapes social cognition, we experimentally assessed capacities for flexible gaze-following in more tolerant Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) and compared to previous data from despotic rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Monkeys experienced one of two possible conditions. In the barrier condition, they observed an actor look upwards into an overheard barrier, so they could not directly see the target of the actor’s gaze without reorienting. In the no barrier condition, they observed an actor look upwards without a barrier blocking her line-of-sight, so they could observe the target of the actor’s gaze by also looking upwards. Both species (N = 58 Barbary macaques, 64 rhesus macaques) could flexibly modulate their gaze responses to account for the demonstrator’s line of sight, looking up more often when no barrier was present, and this flexible modulation declined with age in both species. However, neither species preferentially approached to look inside the barrier when their view of the target location was obscured, although rhesus macaques approached more overall. This pattern suggests that both tolerant and despotic macaques exhibit similar capacities to track other’s line of sight and do not preferentially reorient their bodies to observe what an actor looks at in this situation. This contrasts with other work indicating that competitive primates are especially adept at some aspects of theory of mind. Thus, it is important to understand both the similarities and differences in the social–cognitive abilities of primates with different social styles.

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Decision-making in animals: rational choices and adaptive strategies

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition

De Petrillo, F. & Rosati, A.G. (2021). Decision-making in animals: rational choices and adaptive strategies. In: Cambridge Handbook of Animal Cognition (A. Kaufman, J. Call, & J. Kaufman, eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 770-791.

[PDF] [Publisher’s version] Abstract

Humans face a myriad of choices every day, from simple decisions about what to eat for lunch or how much time to spend on leisure versus work, to more complex decisions like selecting between competitive jobs offers or deciding whether or not get married. How do we make these choices? This question has spurred research in decision science across fields including economics, psychology, and biology, and has led to the development of several normative theories and models predicting how decision-makers should act to choose optimally.

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Logical inferences from visual and auditory information in ruffed lemurs and sifakas

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition

De Petrillo, F. & Rosati, A.G. (2020). Logical inferences from visual and auditory information in ruffed lemurs and sifakas. Animal Behaviour, 164: 193-204

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Inference by exclusion, or the ability to select a correct course of action by systematically excluding other potential alternatives, is a form of logical inference that allow individuals to solve problems without complete information. Current comparative research shows that several bird, mammal, and primate species can find hidden food through inference by exclusion. Yet there is also wide variation in how successful different species are, as well kinds of sensory information they can use to do so. An important question is therefore why some species are better at engaging in logical inference than others. Here, we investigate the evolution of logical reasoning abilities by comparing two strepsirrhine primate species that vary in dietary ecology: frugivorous ruffed lemur (Varecia spp.) and folivorous Coquerel’s sifakas (Propithecus coquereli). Across two studies, we examined their abilities to locate food using direct information versus inference from exclusion and using both visual and auditory information. In Study 1, we assessed whether these lemurs could make inferences when full visual and auditory information about the two potential locations of food were provided. In Study 2, we then compared their ability to make direct inferences versus inferences by exclusion in both the visual and auditory domains. We found that both lemur species can use visual information to find food, but that only ruffed lemurs were also able to use auditory cues, mirroring differences in the complexity of their wild ecology. We further found that, unlike many anthropoid species tested to date, both strepsirrhine species failed to make inferences by exclusion. These results highlight the importance of natural history in understanding the evolution of logical inference, and help reconstruct the deeper phylogeny of primate cognition.

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Ecological rationality: convergent decision-making in apes and capuchins

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition

De Petrillo, F. & Rosati, A.G. (2019). Ecological rationality: convergent decision-making in apes and capuchins. Behavioural Processes, 164: 201-213.

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Humans and other animals appear to defy many principles of economic ‘rationality’ when making decisions. Here, we use an ecological rationality framework to examine patterns of decision-making across species to illu- minate the origins of these strategies. We argue that examples of convergent evolution—the independent emergence of similar traits in species facing similar environments—can provide a crucial test for evolutionary theories of decision-making. We first review theoretical work from evolutionary biology proposing that many economically-puzzling patterns of decision-making may be biologically adaptive when considering the en- vironment in which they are made. We then focus on convergence in ecology, behavior, and cognition of apes and capuchin monkeys as an example of how to apply this ecological framework across species. We review evidence that wild chimpanzees and capuchins, despite being distantly related, both exploit ecological niches characterized by costly extractive foraging and risky hunting behaviors. We then synthesize empirical studies comparing these species’ decision preferences. In fact, both capuchins and chimpanzees exhibit high tolerance for delays in inter-temporal choice tasks, as well as a preference for risky outcomes when making decisions under uncertainty. Moreover, these species exhibit convergent psychological mechanisms for choices, including emotional responses to decision outcomes and sensitivity to social context. Finally, we argue that identifying the evolutionary pressures driving the emergence of specific decision strategies can shed light into the adaptive nature of human economic preferences.

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Heterochrony in chimpanzee and bonobo spatial memory development

Development and aging, Evolutionary variation in cognition

Rosati, A.G. (2019). Heterochrony in chimpanzee and bonobo spatial memory development. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 169: 302-321.

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Objectives: The emergence of human-unique cognitive abilities has been linked to our species’ extended juvenile period. Comparisons of cognitive development across species can provide new insights into the evolutionary mechanisms shaping cognition. This study examined the development of different components of spatial memory, cognitive mechanisms that support complex foraging, by comparing two species with similar life history that vary in wild ecology: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Materials and Methods: Spatial memory development was assessed using a cross-sectional experimental design comparing apes ranging from infancy to adulthood. Study 1 tested 73 sanctuary-living apes on a task examining recall of a single location after a one-week delay, compared to an earlier session. Study 2 tested their ability to recall multiple locations within a complex environment. Study 3 examined a subset of individuals from Study 2 on a motivational control task. Results: In Study 1, younger bonobos and chimpanzees of all ages exhibited improved performance in the test session compared to their initial learning experience. Older bonobos, in contrast, did not exhibit a memory boost in performance after the delay. In Study 2, older chimpanzees exhibited an improved ability to recall multiple locations, whereas bonobos did not exhibit any age-related differences. In Study 3, both species were similarly motivated to search for food in the absence of memory demands. Discussion: These results indicate that closely-related species with similar life history characteristics can exhibit divergent patterns of cognitive development, and suggests a role of socioecological niche in shaping patterns of cognition in Pan.

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Chimpanzee cognition and the roots of the human mind

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition, Social cognition and cooperation

Rosati, A.G. (2017). Chimpanzee cognition and the roots of the human mind. In: Chimpanzees and Human Evolution (M. Muller, R. Wrangham & D. Pilbeam, eds.). Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 703-745.

[PDF] Abstract

The origins of the human mind have been a puzzle ever since Darwin (1871, 1872). Despite striking continuities in the behavior of humans and nonhumans, our species also exhibits a suite of abilities that diverge from the rest of the animal kingdom: we create and utilize complex technology, pass cultural knowledge from generation to generation, and cooperate across numerous and diverse contexts. Why do humans exhibit these abilities, but other animals (mostly) do not? This is a fundamental question in biology, psychology, and philosophy. This puzzle involves two main parts. The first is concerned with identifying the psychological capacities that are unique to humans. This phylogenetic question can be addressed through careful comparisons of humans and other animals to pinpoint the cognitive traits that are likely derived in our species. The second is concerned with the function of these capacities, and the context in which they arose. This evolutionary question examines why, from an ultimate perspective, we evolved these specialized capacities in the first place. Solving these puzzles poses a special challenge because it is only possible to directly measure the cognition of living animals. The bodies of extinct species leave traces in the fossil record, and even some behavioral traits exhibit well-understood relationships with physical traits—such as relationships between dentition and dietary ecology, or mating system and sexual size dimorphism. These relationships provide important benchmarks when biologists infer the behavior of extinct species. Unfortunately, cognition does not fossilize, and neither do the brains that generate cognitive abilities. Even those features of neuroanatomy that do leave some trace in the fossil record—such as brain size or particular anatomical landmarks—are often related to the kinds of complex cognitive capacities potentially unique to humans in a coarse fashion. As such, identifying derived human cognitive traits requires reconstructing the mind of the last common ancestor of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus), and humans (Homo sapiens). This reconstruction then can be used to infer what cognitive characteristics have changed in the human lineage.

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Ecological variation in cognition: Insights from bonobos and chimpanzees

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition

Rosati, A.G. (2017). Ecological variation in cognition: Insights from bonobos and chimpanzees. In: Bonobos: Unique in Mind, Brain and Behavior (B. Hare & S. Yamamoto, eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 157-170.

[PDF] Abstract

Bonobos and chimpanzees are closely related, yet they exhibit important differences in their wild socio-ecology. Whereas bonobos live in environments with less seasonal variation and more access to fallback foods, chimpanzees face more competition over spatially distributed, variable resources. This chapter argues that bonobo and chimpanzee cognition show psychological signatures of their divergent wild ecology. Current evidence shows that despite strong commonalities in many cognitive domains, apes express targeted differences in specific cognitive skills critical for wild foraging behaviours. In particular, bonobos exhibit less accurate spatial memory, reduced levels of patience and greater risk aversion than do chimpanzees. These results have implications for understanding the evolution of human cognition, as studies of apes are a critical tool for modelling the last common ancestor of humans with nonhuman apes. Linking comparative cognition to species’ natural foraging behaviour can begin to address the ultimate reason for why differences in cognition emerge across species.

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Foraging cognition: Reviving the ecological intelligence hypothesis

Decision-making and cognitive control, Evolutionary variation in cognition

Rosati, A. G. (2017). Foraging cognition: Reviving the ecological intelligence hypothesis. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 691-702.

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What are the origins of intelligent behavior? The demands associated with living in complex social groups have been the favored explanation for the evolution of primate cognition in general and human cognition in particular. However, recent comparative research indicates that ecological variation can also shape cognitive abilities. I synthesize the emerging evidence that ‘foraging cognition’ – skills used to exploit food resources, including spatial memory, decision-making, and inhibitory control – varies adaptively across primates. These findings provide a new framework for the evolution of human cognition, given our species’ dependence on costly, high-value food resources. Understanding the origins of the human mind will require an integrative theory accounting for how humans are unique in both our sociality and our ecology.

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